1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of networking. More specifically, the present invention relates to programmable packet filtering in a prioritized chain.
2. Background Information
The Internet may be characterized as a global network of networks through which countless devices communicate electronically. In a typical exchange of information between two or more devices connected to a large network such as the Internet, data from a source device for example, will likely propagate through numerous switching devices prior to the data reaching one or more designated destination devices. In order to determine where the data should be forwarded to next, certain such intermediate switching devices inspect the data at various points throughout the transmission to determine the respective source and destination addresses of the sender and recipient(s). In order to ascertain intermediate forwarding addresses for the data, some switching devices rely on previous transmissions between identical source and/or destination devices, whereas other switching devices reference routing tables in order to ascertain the intermediate forwarding address. In any event, the time with which it takes for the data to be received at the destination device after being transmitted from the source device is proportional to the speed at which the network operates including the time it takes for the data to propagate through each network switching device.
As the number of devices communicating over the Internet continues to exponentially increase, the volume and complexity of the data transmitted correspondingly continues to increase. Accordingly, networks that were considered to be the fastest of their kind only a few years ago are now considered by many to be too slow to handle modern communication requirements. As new network transport mediums such as fiber optics continue to replace legacy copper-wire networks for example, new data communication performance metrics are continually being achieved. Unfortunately however, as network performance continues to increase, the operational performance of intermediate switching devices connected to such networks must correspondingly increase so as not to become the bottleneck affecting network performance.